Chapter 1
One
MY LIFE IS A clerical error. The simple truth is that I’m only here, writing this, because of some mix-up at school with the GCSE classes; too many kids for Art, not enough for Drama.
Every Friday afternoon, in the small black classroom they called a theatre, we – the show-offs, the skivers and me – plodded through the syllabus: Blood Brothers, Shakers, A Taste of Honey, Two.
And, much to near everyone’s surprise, not least my own, I did well.
It wasn’t long before people wanted to partner with me, and the popular girls wanted me in their scenes.
Offstage, I was a mess of hormones and insecurity.
But onstage, there was this calm. Onstage, I made sense.
When I moved up to sixth form, my new teacher took me aside after class. She put her arm around my shoulder and told me I was watchable, that I had a spark.
‘Do you have plans for uni, Shannon?’
She told me I ought to think about drama school. I said I didn’t know what that was. She laughed like I was telling a joke.
That night I went home and typed drama school into my laptop, and waited for the screen to load.
>LAMDA
>RADA
I scrolled through page after page of the stuff.
>Bristol Old Vic
>Italia Conti
>Central
Each establishment gloated with ever more bloated pride about their successes; each repeated their commitment to only the finest tutors, the most state-of-the-art facilities, the brightest and best students.
I stared at the screen, transfixed. Suddenly the life I’d pictured for myself – living ten minutes from home, a safe, comfortable job, circling the same bunch of people I’d known since primary school – didn’t seem so certain.
But Mum was calling. Tea was ready. I went and had my chips, egg and beans, and when my parents asked me how school was that day I said fine.
I didn’t tell them what the teacher had said.
I didn’t tell them about those impressive buildings down south with their acronymic names and blessings from the Queen.
Or that my thoughts were distended with that new world, that bright, brilliant world that someone actually thought I had a chance of entering.
I didn’t tell them about the pilot light that was tick, tick, ticking inside my belly.
IN SECRET I ORDERED prospectuses. When they arrived, I stowed them in a plastic carrier bag beneath my bed.
At night I took them out and ran my fingers over the stiff glossy covers.
I touched the faces of lovelorn heroines, their nubile bodies contorted in grief.
I stroked the chiselled jawline of the second-year clutching a weathered skull.
I read the words of crusty principals, listing the merits of their revered establishments.
I absorbed the course descriptions, memorizing the minutiae of each semester, learning by rote the names of graduates who’d gone on to success in the West End, Broadway, Hollywood.
I continued with my studies, with rehearsals.
I perfected how I walked, how I spoke, the way I held myself, shoulders back, neck long, pretending.
I watched my teacher’s eyes light up from across the room at my final performance and allowed myself a small smile when the A* was slid across the desk two weeks later.
A little bit of praise is a dangerous thing.
Tick, tick, tick. That weak blue flame again.
AND THEN THE LETTER arrived: creamy, thick, weighted with expectation.
Dear Shannon Bell, I am delighted to confirm—
‘Mum!’ I yelled up the stairs. ‘Dad?’
—an unconditional offer of acceptance.
It didn’t feel real. The audition process had been gruelling, and – to my parents’ dismay – expensive.
Fifty quid a pop for the privilege of delivering a two-minute Portia or Juliet to a panel of indifferent tutors, not to mention the small fortune spent on train fares and hotels.
I auditioned at five drama schools over four months.
At each place, the people there already seemed to know one another.
The waiting rooms were crammed to bursting with Tillys and Xanders, Hugos and Veritys, sharing tips, titbits and gossip.
Did you hear that Kitty got accepted at RADA?
I’ve got my second round at LAMDA next week.
They say the head of movement’s a real ballbreaker.
What’s your classical?
What’s your modern?
My final audition was at the Royal London School of Dramatic Arts. I’d been rejected everywhere else, so this was my last shot before an enforced year of waiting tables.
Three rounds; one day. Three rounds doing the same classical and modern speeches to a rotation of different faces; three rounds of wondering if I was too fat, too wiry, too ugly, too plain; three rounds of waiting to be called out; three rounds of asking myself if this was it, if this was the moment they’d realize there’d been a mistake, that this girl shouldn’t be here, that she shouldn’t have made it this far.
But here it was.
—we look forward to welcoming you in the new academic year.
Proof of . . . something. A spark, maybe.
LOOKING BACK, MAYBE THAT was the perfect moment.
The letter trembling in my hand. Or maybe it was before then, that teacher’s arm around my shoulder, her hot mid-morning coffee breath in my ear, telling me I had something.
I keep looking back for it, the moment, keep fumbling my way through memories to find it.
When the future was held, a suspended thing, humming with possibility.
I could’ve stopped it all then, before I met her . . . before she—
I could’ve taken that teacher’s kernel of praise and nurtured it, let it grow into something private and perfect.
Something no one else needed to know about.
Something just for me. I could’ve done English at uni, gone to Durham or Warwick or wherever.
I could’ve joined the drama society, performed in some poorly attended Pygmalion and enjoyed the secret knowledge that someone, somewhere once thought I had talent.
I could’ve met somebody – some untroubled boy with scruffy hair and a battered pair of Converse who thought he was an artist but was happy to work in marketing.
We could’ve dated for three years, got married, had 2.
5 children and lived happily ever after, or something like that.
I could’ve been normal, a normal person with a family, a job, and an unending cache of blameless days and dreamless nights.
But I didn’t do that.
If I had, maybe she would still be alive.